My thought exactly: it’s essentially impossible to avoid micro plastic ingestion. I have no idea how one would go about removing plastic packaging from their food supply as it’s used to package basically everything.
Small steps. I replaced my mixing bowls with stainless steel, my food storage containers that take anything warm with glass, and my drinking cup with an SS one as well. At the very least, everything looks cooler now ;)
You can interpret it that way, if you want. However, that wasn’t really what I had in mind. Just pointing out that Americans seem to love acronyms so much that it gets completely ridiculous at times. In highly technical contexts it makes sense when you’re writing documentation or articles for a very small audience.
For instance, you can shorten Green House Gasses to GHGs if you’re audience consists of climate scientists, but don’t expect the general public to know that acronym. Go ahead and shorten Volatile Organic Compounds to VOCs if you’re writing to chemists. You can talk about CMB when talking to geologists and FFPs when talking to cosmologists, but people outside those fiels probably have never heard of these things let alone the acronyms.
In normal every day situations it just doesn’t make sense, because you can’t realistically expect everyone to know all of these thousands of accornyms for thousands of more or less common items, situations and things in life.
Generally speaking, it’s a good practice to do it exactly the way you just did. It’s just that certain acronyms have already been taken. Well, technically all of them have already been taken, but some are obscure while others are familiar to the general public.
If your new acronym collides with something obscure like CMB, then who cares (apart from geologists). If you end up using somethign more familiar ones such as USB, BMW or HTC, you’re going to run into some issues. However, it migh be fun to write an article and really mess with the reader by forcing as many acronym collisions as possible.
Yeah, I’m pessimistic about the huge shift we’d need to make, especially in America. But so much of that packaging is completely unnecessary. Glass jars instead of plastic tubs or bottles. If you visit some places in the UK, they don’t give you single use plastics in hotels and restaurants, though you can still buy that stuff in stores. Water is bottled in glass. Continental breakfast jams are in tiny glass jars. Some snack packages come in waxed paper bags, like what some tortilla chip brands are packaged in here in the US. Paperboard, cardboard, tins and foil. For toiletries, come countries have stores focused on sustainability where you bring your own reusable containers and they have dispensers for things like shampoo and liquid soap. Like a…soda fountain, but for cleaning products.
People are just so opposed to it here. Like aggressively opposed it it. Like eating yogurt in a glass jar instead of plastic is offensive to them. I don’t get it.
It’s actually not used everywhere: Cellophane is quite common as its permeable to water vapour but pretty much only that. Bio-sourced (cellulose) and compostable and you’re free to throw it in paper recycling as they’re used to fishing it out of the sludge (it’s what transparent letter windows are made of). And compostable here means in your own backyard, no industrial high-temperature composting needed.
Many plastics can’t readily be replaced but cellulose and lignin based stuff is at a stage where it can fill many many roles.
Also don’t forget metal, especially stainless steel. Glass if you want to look inside. All that will need regulation as currently producers are happily externalising costs.
Now if someone would produce stailness containers that are on the same performance and general engineering level as lock&lock.
My thought exactly: it’s essentially impossible to avoid micro plastic ingestion. I have no idea how one would go about removing plastic packaging from their food supply as it’s used to package basically everything.
Small steps. I replaced my mixing bowls with stainless steel, my food storage containers that take anything warm with glass, and my drinking cup with an SS one as well. At the very least, everything looks cooler now ;)
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I’ll never stop using SS for stainless steel or screenshots. At least as long as I’m not writing German ;)
Americans are so funny, because literally everything has to have an abbreviation.
Woah there, did you just call me American?
You can interpret it that way, if you want. However, that wasn’t really what I had in mind. Just pointing out that Americans seem to love acronyms so much that it gets completely ridiculous at times. In highly technical contexts it makes sense when you’re writing documentation or articles for a very small audience.
For instance, you can shorten Green House Gasses to GHGs if you’re audience consists of climate scientists, but don’t expect the general public to know that acronym. Go ahead and shorten Volatile Organic Compounds to VOCs if you’re writing to chemists. You can talk about CMB when talking to geologists and FFPs when talking to cosmologists, but people outside those fiels probably have never heard of these things let alone the acronyms.
In normal every day situations it just doesn’t make sense, because you can’t realistically expect everyone to know all of these thousands of accornyms for thousands of more or less common items, situations and things in life.
So, like using SS only after having used stainless steel directly and still being in the same context?
Generally speaking, it’s a good practice to do it exactly the way you just did. It’s just that certain acronyms have already been taken. Well, technically all of them have already been taken, but some are obscure while others are familiar to the general public.
If your new acronym collides with something obscure like CMB, then who cares (apart from geologists). If you end up using somethign more familiar ones such as USB, BMW or HTC, you’re going to run into some issues. However, it migh be fun to write an article and really mess with the reader by forcing as many acronym collisions as possible.
! What’s wrong with Solidus Snake?
CQC your local Nazi
Why? We must eradicate the microplastics! Who knows, maybe we can put all those neo-Nazis coming to prominence to good use.
These guys are getting more and more open about it.
As a person with a medical condition that makes it hard for me to lift things, moving away from plastic really sucks. ☹️
Yeah, I’m pessimistic about the huge shift we’d need to make, especially in America. But so much of that packaging is completely unnecessary. Glass jars instead of plastic tubs or bottles. If you visit some places in the UK, they don’t give you single use plastics in hotels and restaurants, though you can still buy that stuff in stores. Water is bottled in glass. Continental breakfast jams are in tiny glass jars. Some snack packages come in waxed paper bags, like what some tortilla chip brands are packaged in here in the US. Paperboard, cardboard, tins and foil. For toiletries, come countries have stores focused on sustainability where you bring your own reusable containers and they have dispensers for things like shampoo and liquid soap. Like a…soda fountain, but for cleaning products.
People are just so opposed to it here. Like aggressively opposed it it. Like eating yogurt in a glass jar instead of plastic is offensive to them. I don’t get it.
There’s actually a global shortage of the sand they use to make glass and concrete…
It’s actually not used everywhere: Cellophane is quite common as its permeable to water vapour but pretty much only that. Bio-sourced (cellulose) and compostable and you’re free to throw it in paper recycling as they’re used to fishing it out of the sludge (it’s what transparent letter windows are made of). And compostable here means in your own backyard, no industrial high-temperature composting needed.
Many plastics can’t readily be replaced but cellulose and lignin based stuff is at a stage where it can fill many many roles.
Also don’t forget metal, especially stainless steel. Glass if you want to look inside. All that will need regulation as currently producers are happily externalising costs.
Now if someone would produce stailness containers that are on the same performance and general engineering level as lock&lock.